Steinbeck sets the scene by giving vibrant colours to objects like the path in the first paragraph. He describes the path as being ‘golden’, and golden is a very shiny colour and it sticks out. The sand has also got a vibrant colour; this colour is yellow. Yellow is a very vibrant and bright colour. Steinbeck also sets the scene by the description of the place that the scene is going to take place.
The novel is different to the film version because the novel starts off by describing the scene in which George and Lennie are going to appear in first and the film starts off with a train carriage moving along. It is very dark in this carriage and every now and the there would be a flash of light coming through the slats of wood. This continues and the camera is slowly moving to the side and eventually the light casts a shadow on a human figure. At first he is just a faint outline, but as the camera scans more to the side, the figure increasingly gets clearer for us to see. The film is also different to the novel because in a film, characters can show emotions, but in a book, you can’t recognise where each emotion should be. An advantage of film is that you can change from one scene to another by fading out or cutting. But in a book, all you can do is start a new paragraph, and sometimes the reader can get a little confused.
The mood is developed/created by Steinbeck through his choice of language by him using all sorts of describing words, such as ‘Willows fresh and green with every spring’, which is describing the vegetation, ‘warm’, that is the heat of the water. There are many more examples contained in the first paragraph. He also uses some adverbs to describe an action of something, such as; ‘ runs deep’ which describes how deep the river runs.
The atmosphere is describes as being calm and peaceful. You can tell this because everything that has been described is done so using calm and peaceful words, e.g. ‘ slipped twinkling over the yellow sands’. I would say that is a example of peacefulness and calmness because the word ‘twinkling’ makes you feel calm, relaxed and soothes you because of the way it way it makes you feel.
In the film, the atmosphere of the opening shot is mysterious because the camera is positioned inside a carriage, a very dark carriage. All of a sudden, out of the blue, a light flashes onto a strange object; but the light reveals the clear outline of a person.
Music also helps to create the mood of the story. The way in which it does this in the beginning of the film, in the dark, the music is very claming. The instrument played is the harp, and in the background you can hear the sound of the train’s tracks clicking, which gives the obvious impression that it is a train. As the camera moves on the music dies. You would think that something is about to happen, but then the music starts again and this time it builds up. While the music is building up, the sound of the train tracks fade away.
The order of events in the book, and the film, are not the same. In the book it describes the place where George and Lennie go to get a drink at ‘the pool’, where as in the film it starts off with a black screen in the carriage of a train with a man in the shadow. The reason for this is that the opening of the film might be a flashback from the end of the film from when George killed Lennie. I came to this conclusion because at the end of the film George jumped into a carriage and at the beginning of the film George is in a carriage by himself, so I thought it could be a flashback for that reason.
In the book, Steinbeck introduces his characters of George and Lennie at the same time. He does this to show that George and Lennie are like brothers and never leave each other. This also shows that the two of them travel around together and if one does something then the other follows. Normally if George does something then Lennie copies him. It also shows that they never split up and that is one of them is offered something e.g. a job, then they would not take it unless the other was offered a position as well. So they come as a package, George is the leader and looks after Lennie. Lennie appears to be a bit simple and George is a lot smarter.
George appears first in Steinbeck’s novel version. This is like a father to Lennie and so leads them both wherever they go. Lennie is exactly like a child, but bigger. I do not think that Lennie would be able to survive without George because he is irresponsible and relies on George. It is very dramatic because it shows who is in charge. George also appears first in Sinises’ film version at the very beginning. This is because it relates to the flashback. He is started off inside a train and he is having a flashback of what he and Lennie had done back in ‘Weed’ and in their job after ‘Weed’. I think that George could be thinking how he could right the wrongs that himself and Lennie had done in the past. It is very dramatic because he is thinking about when they used to be best friends and when they used to travel together and how George used be like a father to Lennie and tell him right from wrong. He is in shadow because it is nighttime and also, so that the audience would be uncertain and find it hard to see what was happening. Lights flashed across his face. This is effective because the lights would cast slightly on his face every few seconds, so this makes the viewers want to see who or what it actually is. It gradually builds up tension for the audience because of this. It is also effective because it shows that George may have two sides to himself. The audience is curious/intrigued as to who he is because they do not know who he is. They feel that if the light continues to cast on his face, then they may get a rough idea of what he looks like.
The camera then cuts to a shot of a woman running. This is effective because maybe the shot of the man in the train and the woman running are related or connected in some way. The shots are transmitted from being medium close-up of the man’s face in the train to a close-up on him, it is then altered to a very long shot on the woman from ‘Weed’, running toward the camera gradually getting closer until it becomes a medium close-up of her.
Tension is built-up by the series of shots because it depends on the order that the scenes are shown, to build up more tension. George, Lennie and the girl also build up tension by running from Weed. The tension here is that the woman is supposed to be running away from George and Lennie, but the weird thing is, that she is running towards the camera and George and Lennie are running away from it. So this gives us the feeling as I they are running towards each other but are in fact running away from each other. The audience is encouraged to side with George and Lennie because the shots are most of the time, during the chase are set on them. Another reason why the audience could side with George and Lennie is because Lennie looks quite dopey and is big, slowing down George, so therefore George has to encourage, or tell, Lennie to hurry up or the people on the ranch would gain on them. Also, George and Lennie’s faces look considerably innocent, but the ranchers face’s look entirely enraged, so it makes the audience feel sorry for them.
Curley’s wife is presented in a very clear, similar manner in both the novel - very descriptive - and the film - very visual. For this essay I will discuss how Steinbeck introduces her. In chapter two of the book when George and Lennie are just getting used to their bunkhouse, they are putting all of their equipment by their beds then unpacking all of their gear and are laying their beds out. They looked up at the door and a ‘rectangle of sunshine in the door way was cut off ‘. There was a beautiful female standing in the doorway. This girl was covered in red from head to toe, her make-up and clothes. Her lips were ‘rouged’; she had red make-up piled on her face, mainly her eyes. Her eyes were spaced apart from each other. Her nails could have rebounded the sunlight because she had so much nail varnish on her nails. Her hair was described in the book as being ‘ hung in little clusters, like sausages’. The dress that she was wearing a ‘cotton house dress and red mules’. She had ‘little bouquets of Ostrich feathers’ on her insteps.
With her wearing all of these red things, this may suggest that she is slightly flirty and devilish, this is because red is the colour we normally associate with the devil or passion. It was obvious that she was trying to flirt with George and Lennie because she placed her hands on her back and leaned her body against the doorframe, so that her body was trusted forward in a sexy manner.
Lennie starts to look intently at her as his eyes move up and down her body; he kept staring at her as if he had never seen a girl before. She was looking for Curly, or so she said, and George told her that if he saw him he would tell him that she was looking for him. With a ‘twitch’ of her body and a smile, she said goodbye and went outside
I think that Curley’s wife has got two sides to her personality. One of her sides is where she is ‘flirty’, persistent and provocative; in the way that she dresses and comes across to men and the other side to her is when she is sad, lonely and shy because in my opinion she is scared of her husband, she says is always looking for him but in fact she is not.
Curley’s wife also has a dream - to be a Hollywood film star, but she thinks that her mother has stolen the letter to her dream, so she married Curley to get back at her mother and also to get away from ‘it all’. She must now realise that she could never complete her dream, so marrying Curley means that she has left her dreams behind her.
For my powerful scene I have chosen to write about the fight scene about Curley and Lennie in the film.
Firstly, the scene starts when Curley enters the bunkhouse looking for his wife. George and Lennie are laughing at Whit, Carlson and Slim (other characters in the film) because they are making jokes about how Curley cannot keep his wife with him and that she is always looking for him and he is always looking for her, but she, in fact, is trying to stay away from Curley because he is always abusive towards her.
Lennie is a bit slow and so he gets the jokes after everybody else, and therefore, he laughs after everybody else. But, Curley thinks that Lennie is giggling at him but he is in fact laughing at the jokes told earlier. As a result of Lennie laughing Curley says something to him and tells him to ‘get up’ and fight. Lennie sits silently on his seat and does not respond. Curley is enraged by, what he thinks are, people laughing at him. He clenches his fist and swings violently at Lennie. Lennie falls of his seat and onto the floor. Curley has a good punch because he used to be a boxer. He keeps on swinging repeatedly at Lennie’s face and Lennie is so shocked, that he raises his hands up to his face. Curley then starts to punch Lennie repeatedly in his stomach. Everybody in the bunkhouse was shouting ‘get him Lennie’. The atmosphere was electric and everyone was telling Lennie to fight back, but he would not do anything. George then started to shout ‘get him Lennie’ and after a while Lennie heard him shouting and then picked himself up and started to fight back. Curley took a swipe at Lennie’s face and he grabbed Curley’s fist with his ‘huge paws’ and began to squeeze the hand. Lennie’s face begins to change from scared, frightened and worried to hard, evil and infuriated. Lennie gradually pushes Curley’ by his fist, over to a table where Curley pleads with him to let go. Lennie then pushes him onto the table and squeezes harder.
The camera looks at Lennie’s battered face and blurs out his hands so that you have to concentrate on his face and vice versa, it changes so that you can see his huge hands crushing Curley’s. This scene is shown in this way to show how angry Lennie really is. Whilst Curley is on the table, Lennie’s grip is so hard; Curley’s hand starts to drip with dark, thick blood.
By now, I would say that the audience is starting to feel
a little shocked and rather frightened because they knew that Lennie was a strong individual, but now they know his true strength.
George then rushes over to Lennie and tries to pull him away from Curley, but he can’t, so George calls Slim to help and with both of them pulling, they eventually succeed. George drags Lennie over to his bunk and waits there until the others sort out Curley.
Curley is on the table, partially stunned, and slim tells Curley that if he tells anyone about what happened, then they would do something bad to him. Slim also told him that he did! Get his hand caught in a machine and that he is not going to tell his father about what happened.
In the book, all throughout the fight scene, they describe Curley and Lennie using animal imagery, for example ‘Curley stepped over to Lennie like a Terrier’, ‘Lennie covered his face with his huge paws’, ’Curley was flopping like a fish on a line’. This is effective because it shows the strength or what they give the impression of being like whilst they were fighting. From there on, in the film and the book, Curley had his whole arm in a sling.
I think that this scene is very powerful because it shows that Lennie is not just big, slow, sensitive, and unintelligent and cannot fend for himself. In fact, when provoked, he can be hard to control, very strong and slightly emotional.
To conclude, to get a good understanding of the story of ‘Of Mice and Men’, I would suggest that you both watch the film by Sinise - in order to get a good visual understanding and read the book by Steinbeck - in order to get a good descriptive understanding. By doing this it will give the viewer/reader a better perceptive of the characters and the story being told.